A number of methods have been developed specifically to alter the sequence of an isolated DNA in addition to methods to alter directly the genomic information of various plants, fungi and animals, including humans (“gene therapy”). The latter methods generally include the use of viral or plasmid vectors carrying nucleic acid sequences encoding partial or complete portions of a particular protein which is expressed in a cell or tissue to effect the alteration. The expression of the particular protein then results in the desired phenotype. For example, retroviral vectors containing a transgenic DNA sequence allowing for the production of a normal CFTR protein when administered to defective cells are described in U.S. Pat. No. 5,240,846. Others have developed different “gene therapy vectors” which include, for example, portions of adenovirus (Ad) or adeno-associated virus (AAV), or other viruses. The virus portions used are often long terminal repeat sequences which are added to the ends of a transgene of choice along with other necessary control sequences which allow expression of the transgene. See U.S. Pat. Nos. 5,700,470 and 5,139,941. Similar methods have been developed for use in plants. See, for example, U.S. Pat. No. 4,459,355 which describes a method for transforming plants with a DNA vector and U.S. Pat. No. 5,188,642 which describes cloning or expression vectors containing a transgenic DNA sequence which when expressed in plants confers resistance to the herbicide glyphosate. The use of such transgene vectors in any eukaryotic organism adds one or more exogenous copies of a gene, which gene may be foreign to the host, in a usually random fashion at one or more integration sites of the organism's genome at some frequency. The gene which was originally present in the genome, which may be a normal allelic variant, mutated, defective, and/or functional, is retained in the genome of the host.
These methods of gene correction are problematic in that complications which can compromise the health of the recipient, or even lead to death, may result. One such problem is that insertion of exogenous nucleic acid at random location(s) in the genome can have deleterious effects. Another problem with such systems includes the addition of unnecessary and unwanted genetic material to the genome of the recipient, including, for example, viral or other vector remnants, control sequences required to allow production of the transgene protein, and reporter genes or resistance markers. Such remnants and added sequences may have presently unrecognized consequences, for example, involving genetic rearrangements of the recipient genomes. Other problems associated with these types of traditional gene therapy methods include autoimmune suppression of cells expressing an inserted gene due to the presence of foreign antigens. Concerns have also been raised with consumption, especially by humans, of plants containing exogenous genetic material.
More recently, simpler systems involving poly- or oligo-nucleotides have been described for use in the alteration of genomic DNA. These chimeric RNA-DNA oligonucleotides, requiring contiguous RNA and DNA bases in a double-stranded molecule folded by complementarity into a double hairpin conformation, have been shown to effect single basepair or frameshift alterations, for example, for mutation or repair of plant or animal genomes. See, for example, WO 99/07865 and U.S. Pat. No. 5,565,350. In the chimeric RNA-DNA oligonucleotide, an uninterrupted stretch of DNA bases within the molecule is required for sequence alteration of the targeted genome while the obligate RNA residues are involved in complex stability. Due to the length, backbone composition, and structural configuration of these chimeric RNA-DNA molecules, they are expensive to synthesize and difficult to purify. Moreover, if the RNA-containing strand of the chimeric RNA-DNA oligonucleotide is designed so as to direct gene conversion, a series of mutagenic reactions resulting in nonspecific base alteration can result. Such a result compromises the utility of such a molecule in methods designed to alter the genomes of plants and animals, including in human gene therapy applications.
Alternatively, other oligo- or poly-nucleotides have been used which require a triplex forming, usually polypurine or polypyrimidine, structural domain which binds to a DNA helical duplex through Hoogsteen interactions between the major groove of the DNA duplex and the oligonucleotide. Such oligonucleotides may have an additional DNA reactive moiety, such as psoralen, covalently linked to the oligonucleotide. These reactive moieties function as effective intercalation agents, stabilize the formation of a triplex and can be mutagenic. Such agents may be required in order to stabilize the triplex forming domain of the oligonucleotide with the DNA double helix if the Hoogsteen interactions from the oligonucleotide/target base composition are insufficient. See, e.g., U.S. Pat. No. 5,422,251. The utility of these oligonucleotides for directing gene conversion is compromised by a high frequency of nonspecific base changes.
In more recent work, the domain for altering a genome is linked or tethered to the triplex forming domain of the bi-functional oligonucleotide, adding an additional linking or tethering functional domain to the oligonucleotide. See, e.g., Culver et al., Nature Biotechnology 17: 989-93 (1999). Such chimeric or triplex forming molecules have distinct structural requirements for each of the different domains of the complete poly- or oligo-nucleotide in order to effect the desired genomic alteration in either episomal or chromosomal targets.
Other genes, e.g. CFTR, have been targeted by homologous recombination using duplex fragments having several hundred basepairs. See, e.g., Kunzelmann et al., Gene Ther. 3:859-867 (1996). Early experiments to mutagenize an antibiotic resistance indicator gene by homologous recombination used an unmodified DNA oligonucleotide with no functional domains other than a region of complementary sequence to the target See Campbell et al., New Biologist 1: 223-227 (1989). These experiments required large concentrations of the oligonucleotide, exhibited a very low frequency of episomal modification of a targeted exogenous plasmid gene not normally found in the cell and have not been reproduced. However, as shown in the examples herein, we have observed that an unmodified DNA oligonucleotide can convert a base at low frequency which is detectable using the assay systems described herein.
Artificial chromosomes can be useful for the screening purposed identified herein. These molecules are man-made linear or circular DNA molecules constructed from essential cis-acting DNA sequence elements that are responsible for the proper replication and partitioning of natural chromosomes (Murray et al., 1983). The essential elements are: (1) Autonomous Replication Sequences (ARS), (2) Centromeres, and (3) Telomeres.
Yeast artificial chromosomes (YACs) allow large genomic DNA to be modified and used for generating transgenic animals [Burke et al., Science 236:806; Peterson et al., Trends Genet. 13:61 (1997); Choi, et al., Nat. Genet, 4:117-223 (1993), Davies, et al., Biotechnology 11:911-914 (1993), Matsuura, et al., Hum. Mol. Genet., 5:451-459 (1996), Peterson et al., Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci., 93:6605-6609 (1996); and Schedl, et al., Cell, 86:71-82 (1996)]. Other vectors also have been developed for the cloning of large segments of mammalian DNA, including cosmids, and bacteriophage P1 [Sternberg et al., Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A., 87:103-107 (1990)]. YACs have certain advantages over these alternative large capacity cloning vectors [Burke et al., Science, 236:806-812 (1987)]. The maximum insert size is 35-30 kb for cosmids, and 100 kb for bacteriophage P1, both of which are much smaller than the maximal insert for a YAC.
An alternative to YACs are E. coli based cloning systems based on the E. coli fertility factor that have been developed to construct large genomic DNA insert libraries. They are bacterial artificial chromosomes (BACs) and P-1 derived artificial chromosomes (PACs) [Mejia et al., Genome Res. 7:179-186 (1997); Shizuya et al., Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. 89:8794-8797 (1992); Ioannou et al., Nat. Genet., 6:84-89 (1994); Hosoda et al., Nucleic Acids Res. 18:3863 (1990)]. BACs are based on the E. coli fertility plasmid (F factor); and PACs are based on the bacteriophage P1. These vectors propagate at a very low copy number (1-2 per cell) enabling genomic inserts up to 300 kb in size to be stably maintained in recombination deficient hosts. Furthermore, the PACs and BACs are circular DNA molecules that are readily isolated from the host genomic background by classical alkaline lysis [Birnboim et al., Nucleic Acids Res. 7:1513-1523 (1979].
Oligonucleotides designed for use in the alteration of genetic information are significantly different from oligonucleotides designed for antisense approaches. For example, antisense oligonucleotides are perfectly complementary to and bind an mRNA strand in order to modify expression of a targeted mRNA and are used at high concentration. As a consequence, they are unable to produce a gene conversion event by either mutagenesis or repair of a defect in the chromosomal DNA of a host genome. Furthermore, the backbone chemical composition used in most oligonucleotides designed for use in antisense approaches renders them inactive as substrates for homologous pairing or mismatch repair enzymes and the high concentrations of oligonucleotide required for antisense applications can be toxic with some types of nucleotide modifications. In addition, antisense oligonucleotides must be complementary to the mRNA and therefore, may not be complementary to the other DNA strand or to genomic sequences that span the junction between intron sequence and exon sequence.
A need exists for simple, inexpensive oligonucleotides capable of producing targeted alteration of genetic material such as those described herein as well as methods to identify optimal oligonucleotides that accurately and efficiently alter target DNA.